Zora Neale Hurston in the Classroom

“With a harp and a sword in my hands”

T h e N C T E H i g h S c h o o l L i t e r a t u r e S e r i e s

Renée H. Shea andDeborah L. Wilchek

Zora Neale Hurston in the Classroom

Zora Neale H

urston in the ClassroomSH

EA and WILCH

EKNational Council of Teachers of English

1111 W. Kenyon RoadUrbana, Illinois 61801-1096

800-369-6283 or 217-328-3870www.ncte.org

ISSN 1525-5786

With the publication of her landmark novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston has become a widely taught author in English classrooms across the nation. The

authentic voices of her fi ction and nonfi ction embrace colloquial dialect and explore universal themes of relationships, self-discovery, race, and identity. In Zora Neale Hurston in the Classroom, the eleventh book in the NCTE High School Literature Series, teachers will discover new ways to share the work of this important author with students. The book offers a practical approach to Hurston using a range of student-centered activities for teaching Hurston’s nonfi ction, short stories, and the print and fi lm versions of Their Eyes Were Watching God. This volume features numerous resources and strategies for helping students engage with Hurston’s writing. Highlights include biographical information, critical analysis, teacher-tested activities, writing assignments and student models, and discussion strategies and questions. Zora Neale Hurston in the Classroom: “With a harp and a sword in my hands” is a useful resource that will enliven any literature classroom with exciting and enriching ideas and activities.

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ix

Contents

Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xi

1. Where Life and Art Intersect . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

2. Two Short Stories: Using “Spunk” and “Sweat” to

Access Hurston. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14

3. Giving Voice to Their Eyes Were Watching God:

Discussion Strategies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29

4. Writing about Their Eyes Were Watching God:

The Thesis-Driven Essay . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45

5. From Print to Celluloid: The Film of Their Eyes

Were Watching God. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61

6. Hurston’s Nonfiction: A Study in Close Reading . . . . . . . 74

7. Making Connections. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91

Annotated Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97

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contents ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■

Chronology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103

Works Cited. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108

Authors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111

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1 Where Life and Art Intersect

Brilliant, enigmatic, eccentric, gifted, contradictory, determined, tem-

peramental, flamboyant, visionary: every one of these words, andmany others, has been used to describe Zora Neale Hurston inour time as well as her own. The Hurston canon includes fournovels, two books of folklore, an autobiography, numerous shortstories and essays, and several plays—an impressive body of workby many standards. Yet Hurston is more than a respected authoror even a personality: she is a phenomenon. In 2008, the ZoraNeale Hurston Festival in her hometown of Eatonville, Florida,celebrated its twentieth year. The Hurston/Wright Foundation,begun in 1990 under the leadership of author Marita Golden,continues to offer awards, workshops, scholarships, and manyopportunities to further the appreciation and development ofAfrican American writers. Fort Pierce, Florida, where Hurstondied, hosts an annual ZoraFest to celebrate her life and work andrecently began a Heritage Trail in her honor. In 2003, the UnitedStates Postal Service issued a Zora Neale Hurston stamp. In 2004,Barnard College, where Hurston graduated in 1928, establishedthe Zora Neale Hurston Scholarship with the goal of promotingracial and ethnic diversity. Add to all of these activities OprahWinfrey choosing Their Eyes Were Watching God as one of her bookclub selections, and in 2005 producing the film of that novel,

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with Academy Award–winning Halle Berry playing the main char-acter Janie.

It’s no surprise to find Hurston’s stories and essays, and espe-cially her seminal novel Their Eyes Were Watching God (TEWWG),as required reading in many high school and college curricula.Yet “Zora mania”—or “Zora heads,” as many fans refer to them-selves—suggests a connection that goes beyond respect and ap-preciation for the work that crosses racial and ethnic boundaries.Hurston biographer Valerie Boyd, author of Wrapped in Rainbows:

The Life of Zora Neale Hurston, describes how she sees the appealof Hurston in general and TEWWG in particular:

There’s a whole community of Zora lovers out there who havetheir own relationship to her and Their Eyes Were WatchingGod—and often they become “Zora heads,” like I was, and thenstart to read her other books. But this particular novel is thestory of a woman’s journey to know herself, and we are all onthat journey at some time or another. The appeal transcendscolor or culture or gender and touches all people. That’s whywe’re still reading the novel today. There’s an enduring qualityabout her writing that makes us want to go back to it. So what-ever our race, we’re drawn to Janie as this authentic humanbeing that Hurston created. (Telephone interview, 12 Novem-ber 2007)

That authenticity is indeed the basis of Hurston’s appeal and,most likely, the reason for her iconic status. Since, however, everygeneration rewrites even our most beloved texts to make them itsown, we know we cannot start simply by bowing to the literaryicon, but rather by getting to know the life and art of Zora NealeHurston.

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Biographical BackgroundThese days we rarely introduce students to a new author with a“background check” of the factual information about his or herlife; we tend to jump into the work itself with various prereadingexperiences. Hurston is another story. Her birth date cues stu-dents in right away to the spirit of this fascinating woman. Formany years, her birth was listed as 1901 or 1903 from publicrecords she herself filed, yet now most scholars agree that shewas born in 1891. This “factual” discrepancy is a place to start offdiscussions in the spirit of Hurston, who created and constructedidentities throughout her life. In fact, asking students to lop offten years from their own birth date and research the circumstancesof being born earlier can bring some of the characteristic “Zoraplayfulness” into the classroom right away.

Born on January 7, 1891, in Notasulga, Alabama, Hurstonwas the fifth of eight children of John and Lucy Ann Potts Hurston.When she was a toddler, her family moved to Eatonville, Florida,the first incorporated black township in the United States. YoungZora saw Eatonville as a kind of utopia that the writer later glori-fied in her fiction. Boyd describes it:

In Eatonville, Zora was never indoctrinated in inferiority, andshe could see the evidence of black achievement all aroundher. She could look to the town hall and see black men, in-cluding her father, John Hurston, formulating the laws thatgoverned Eatonville. She could look to the Sunday Schools ofthe town’s two churches and see black women, including hermother, Lucy Potts Hurston, directing the Christian curricula.She could look to the porch of the village store and see blackmen and women passing worlds through their mouths in theform of colorful, engaging stories. (http://www.zoranealehurston.com/biography.html)

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When Hurston was thirteen, her mother died, a traumaticevent under any circumstance, but apparently especially so tothis teenager who lost the closest bond she had known. “Thathour began my wanderings,” Hurston later wrote. “Not so muchin geography, but in time. Then not so much in time as in spirit”(qtd. in Wrapped in Rainbows 47). John Hurston remarried withina short time. Hurston did not get along with her stepmother, waspassed from one relative to another, and began working variousmenial jobs as she moved from place to place. Wanting to finishher schooling, she falsified her birth date in 1917 because—atage twenty-six—she could not qualify for free public schoolingin Baltimore unless she was a teenager. She graduated in 1918and entered Howard University in Washington, D.C. There, phi-losopher Alain Locke influenced and encouraged her to considera career as a writer, and in 1921 she published her first shortstory, “John Redding Goes to Sea,” in The Stylus, the Howard Uni-versity literary magazine.

Hurston left Howard when Barnard College in New York Cityoffered her a scholarship. Her interest in folklore led her to studywith the noted anthropologist Franz Boas. After graduating in1928, she worked with Boas doing field research on a fellowshipfrom the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History(1927–1932). A Rosenwald Fellowship (1934) and a GuggenheimFellowship (1935–1936) allowed her to continue her anthropo-logical research.

Combining her interest in folklore and storytelling, Hurstonpublished her first novel, Jonah’s Gourd Vine, in 1934, and in 1935she published Mules and Men, a collection of black Southern folk-lore documenting the influence of voodoo in Florida and NewOrleans. Their Eyes Were Watching God, which became known as

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her masterpiece, was published in 1937. Incorporating some au-tobiographical elements about the end of a relationship betweenHurston and a younger man, the novel was written in a few weekswhile she was doing research in Haiti. Critic Robert Hemenway,author of Zora Neale Hurston: A Literary Biography, describes theimportance of this work:

. . . Hurston’s novel is much more than an outpouring of pri-vate feeling. . . . The novel culminates the fifteen-year effort tocelebrate her birthright, a celebration which came through theexploration of a woman’s consciousness, accompanied by anassertion of that woman’s right to selfhood. (231–32)

Hurston continued to publish during the next few years. Tell

My Horse (1938) is a travelogue and study of Caribbean voodoopractices. She published her autobiography, Dust Tracks on a Road,in 1942 and then two other novels, Moses, Man of the Mountain

(1939) and Seraph on the Suwanee (1948). Although Dust Tracks

was a commercial success and her profile was included in the1942 Who’s Who in America, Current Biography, and Twentieth Cen-

tury Authors, Hurston lived the remainder of her life largely inpoverty and obscurity. Nonetheless, she maintained fiercely in-dependent opinions, even in the face of criticism within her owncommunity. She expressed her opposition to the 1954 Brown v.

Board of Education school desegregation Supreme Court decision,for example, on the grounds that she did not believe black chil-dren needed to attend school with white children in order to re-ceive a quality education. Hurston died in the Saint Lucie Countywelfare home in Fort Pierce, Florida, on January 28, 1960.

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Writing AssignmentRead Hurston’s letter voicing her opposition to the Brown v.

Board of Education decision published in the Orlando Sentinel

in August 1955. Called “Court Order Can’t Make the RacesMix,” it is available online at http://www.lewrockwell.com/epstein/epstein15.html. React to Hurston’s position by writinga response in your voice or the voice of someone living in 1955;agree or disagree with what Hurston has to say.

Hurston and the Harlem RenaissanceAlthough Hurston’s major work, Their Eyes Were Watching God,was not published until 1937, she was an enthusiastic—and flam-boyant—part of the Harlem Renaissance, a great flowering of blackarts and culture that was, in the words of Robert Hemenway, “morea spirit than a movement” (35). Defining the time and place ofthe Harlem Renaissance is problematic, but most scholars agreethat New York City was its center and the 1920s its heyday: “blackwriters between 1919 and 1930 were published in greater num-bers, and received favorably by more publishers, than in any othersingle decade in American life prior to the 1960s” (Hemenway36). Although these writers—Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen,Nella Larsen, Claude McKay, James Weldon Johnson, Jean Toomer,Dorothy West, and W. E. B. DuBois among them—published awide range of ideas and styles, they shared an interest in explor-ing both their African and American heritages and a sense of self-assertion and pride.

Alain Locke, Hurston’s teacher from Howard University, wasa prominent figure during the Harlem Renaissance. He was a PhDfrom Harvard University and Oxford University’s first black Rhodes

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Scholar. His 1925 anthology The New Negro synthesized the artis-tic vision of African American writers, sculptors, painters, musi-cians, and dancers and is considered by many the manifesto ofthis period. Locke recommended Hurston to the editor of theinfluential magazine Opportunity, which published her short story“Drenched in Light,” a portrait of the character Isis Watts, whowas based on the young Zora.

Hurston became an enthusiastic participant at the parties andother gatherings of the luminaries of this period and enjoyed con-siderable recognition for her work. In 1925, she received moreprizes than any other writer at the Opportunity magazine awardsdinner. She won second-prize for her short story “Spunk,” an-other second for her play Color Struck, and two honorable men-tions, one for her short story “Black Death” and another for theplay Spears. Perhaps even more memorable than the awards wasHurston’s entrance that night:

She wore a long, richly colored scarf draped across her shoul-ders. As she strode into the room—jammed with writers andarts patrons, black and white—Zora flung the colorful scarfaround her neck with a dramatic flourish and bellowed a re-minder of the title of her winning play: “ColoooooorStruuuuckkkk!” (Boyd 97–98)

In 1926, Hurston, Langston Hughes, and Wallace Thurmanfounded the periodical Fire!!, which was intended as a quarterlyfor the younger generation of artists and, Hurston hoped, a maga-zine celebrating the folk, the common people, rather than con-centrating on what she called “the race problem.” Various problemsbeset the journal from the start, and only one issue was pub-lished. Yet that issue included Hurston’s “Sweat,” considered oneof her best short stories. The politics of Fire!! demonstrate the

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conflicts within African American intellectual and artistic com-munities over whether the function of art should be primarilyprotest that calls attention to a racist environment or a celebra-tion of the community’s intrinsic art and values. Hemenway praisesHurston for recognizing that “the black intellectual had to chal-lenge both the racist stereotype of folk experience in the Ameri-can minstrel tradition and the historical neglect of the folk arts byblack people themselves” (52). Her attempts to reconcile so-calledhigh and low culture engendered controversy during the 1920sand was reflected later on when fellow writers, such as RichardWright, criticized Their Eyes Were Watching God for its failure totake a stand on racial issues.

Our colleague John Howard, who teaches at Kennedy HighSchool in Maryland, focuses his juniors on African American his-tory and culture as part of his study of Hurston, especially impor-tant literary figures and movements that preceded her. Workingin groups, his students choose one or more of the following toresearch and explore in terms of influence or contribution to Af-rican American literature: e.g., the conjure tale, “the talentedtenth,” Birth of a Nation, Uncle Remus, the trickster tale, MarcusGarvey, Booker T. Washington, W. E. B. DuBois, minstrel shows,and the Great Migration.

An excellent resource to promote this kind of study and thatfeatures visual and auditory renderings of Hurston’s world is theGuide to Harlem Renaissance Materials on the Library of Con-gress website: http://www.loc.gov/rr/program/bib/harlem/harlem.html; it includes both external websites and internal links. Theresources include African American sheet music, photographs fromthe Great Depression to World War II, photographs by Carl VanVechten of some of the celebrities of the time, a collection of tenplays by Hurston that reflect her travels and research into folk-

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lore, jazz recordings by Ella Fitzgerald and Duke Ellington, andso much more. There also is a section of lesson plans for teachers,including many activities for student research and exploration.

The Kingwood College Library website also offers many re-sources, including audio and video clips of the life and times ofHurston. There is even a clip of her reading and singing songs shecollected for the Works Progress Administration–sponsoredFlorida Folklife Project. This site also references other online re-sources for the Harlem Renaissance. One is a video of Hurstonand Langston Hughes; another is an exploration of African Ameri-can women prominent during this period. Links are within thesite: http://kclibrary.nhmccd.edu/Hurston.htm

Alice Walker “Finds” ZoraHurston virtually disappeared from the literary scene and publi-cation after her death. Then in the 1970s, author Alice Walkerdeveloped an interest in her, traveled to Hurston’s birthplace inEatonville and Fort Pierce where she died, and wrote an essaythat was published in Ms. Magazine in 1975. That piece stimu-lated interest in Hurston that resulted in the reissuance of Their

Eyes Were Watching God, a renewed interest in her writing, andeventually the reprinting of her other works. (This essay becamepart of Walker’s award-winning anthology In Search of Our Mother’s

Gardens.)Walker’s essay recounts her journey—and it is most definitely

expressed as a personal journey—in which her quest to “know”Hurston parallels her journey toward self-knowledge. In fact,Walker admits, rather proudly, that she fabricates “a profoundlyuseful lie” (95) of her identity as Hurston’s niece in order to gaininformation from the locals who knew or knew of her. At onepoint, Walker writes, “By this time I am, of course, completely

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into being Zora’s niece, and the lie comes with perfect naturalnessto my lips. Besides, as far as I’m concerned, she is my aunt—andthat of all black people as well” (“Looking for Zora” 103).

Walker’s description of searching for the grave of Hurston inthe Garden of Heavenly Rest, a segregated cemetery, is punctu-ated with quotations from many sources: critics such as RobertHemenway, writings of Langston Hughes and Arna Bontemps,comments from students and librarians who are studying Hurston’spapers, and Hurston herself. It’s a masterfully written essay thatcan be read as a mystery story, research paper, personal quest, ormeditation. Walker’s outrage at the unmarked grave, and her de-termination to change that situation, clearly symbolizes a largerdetermination to “find” and “mark” neglected artists from the Af-rican American past.

Writing AssignmentRead Alice Walker’s essay “Looking for Zora.” Discuss the searchfor Zora Neale Hurston and the “clues” Walker finds and inter-prets. Then consider how this search for Hurston parallelsWalker’s growing awareness of herself and her cultural heritage.

Festivals and FoundationsEver since the reprinting of Their Eyes Were Watching God in thelate 1970s, Zora Neale Hurston has been celebrated in confer-ences, symposia, lectures, festivals, and foundations. Since 1988,the Association to Preserve the Eatonville Community, Inc. hassponsored the Zora Neale Hurston Festival of the Arts and Hu-manities to mark the legacy of Hurston. Teacher and Florida na-tive Sharon Johnston describes the town:

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In areas of Eatonville, I see the front porches, the country store,the pear trees, the pine trees, and the oaks that serve as thebackdrop for Hurston stories. Although dramatic physicalchanges have occurred with the paving of the streets, the inter-state cutting through the town, and the opening of the CatherineAlexander Post Office, the traditional African American cul-ture still exists as evidenced in the prominence of the MacedoniaMissionary Baptist Church where Hurston’s father and brotherwere pastors, the Zora Neale Hurston National Museum of FineArts, and the vendors on street corners offering delicious pit-grilled barbecue and fried fish. (Johnston, AP Central website)

The quiet of this small town of approximately 3,000 resi-dents changes dramatically during the last week of each January.What began as a modest gathering of Zora devotees has turnedinto a multidisciplinary, multiday event that draws more than50,000 locals and tourists, along with celebrities and artists, fromaround the world. Dubbed “ZORA! Festival,” this event has grownfrom lectures and discussions of Hurston and her work to a cel-ebration of black art, history, and culture with participation ofsuch well-known figures as Ruby Dee, Danny Glover, NtozakeShange, Alice Walker, Al Jarreau, and John Hope Franklin. The2007 festival included topics and exhibits from “African Metal-work and Currency of the Igbo Peoples of Nigeria” to “TheEatonville Quilters: A Celebration of Community Tradition.”

In 1990, author and arts advocate Marita Golden and biblio-phile Clyde McElvene founded the Zora Neale Hurston/RichardWright Foundation with the mission “to preserve the legacy andensure the future of black writers and the literature they pro-duced” (http://www.hurston-wright.org). This foundation, alongwith its partners, presents $240,000 in prize money to writerswho compete for the annual Hurston/Wright Legacy Award,offers workshops to both practicing and neophyte writers, and

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develops creative writing programs for middle and high schoolstudents. In an email interview, Golden comments that Hurstonwas “40 years ahead of her time. The changes in the world broughtby the Civil Rights and Women’s Movements finally caught upwith where Zora had been all along.” She explains that she beganthe foundation “as a way to nurture talented African Americanwriters who need institutional support for the task of finding,developing, and honoring their voice” and believes that thefoundation’s “focus on honoring and protecting the unique blackaesthetic and worldview makes it complimentary with Zora’s spirit”(email interview, 23 October 2007).

In recent years, another “Zora fest” has begun in Fort Pierce,Florida, where Hurston is buried. At the end of March, scholars,teachers, and readers of Hurston gather to discuss and celebrateher life and work. Jody Bonet, director of St. Lucie County Cul-tural Affairs, initiated the Zora Neale Hurston Dust Tracks Heri-tage Trail “to bring a sense of pride to the community and spreadZora’s universal theme of ‘jump at de sun’” (email interview, 2January 2008). Officially dedicated in 2004, the Heritage Trailhas the long-term goal of establishing stops all over Florida andin other parts of the country where Hurston spent time and madean impact. St. Lucie County recently received a grant to producea documentary on Hurston that will, according to Bonet, include“recordings of reenactments and interviews with people who knewZora.”

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Collaborative ActivityWorking in groups, research one of the Zora festivals, events,or foundations and develop a proposal for a group of studentsin your school to travel and learn more about Hurston and herwork. Be specific about where you would go and what youwould learn (e.g., a writing workshop in Washington, D.C., awalk down the Dust Tracks Heritage Trail in Fort Pierce,Florida). Keep in mind that you are essentially writing an ar-gument for the worthwhile nature and educational value ofthe activity or event you choose. (You might even consider aspecific audience for financial support, such as a local busi-ness or a parent group.) Conduct your research online andorganize your findings as a PowerPoint presentation.

Perhaps the clearest sign that Hurston has become an essen-tial part of the national landscape was the National Endowmentfor the Arts selection of Their Eyes Were Watching God for its 2007Big Read. Communities all across the United States celebratedHurston and her novel with activities ranging from discussiongroups (face-to-face and online) to storytelling and writing work-shops to films to poetry slams and concerts. The Washington Post

reported on Washington, D.C.’s month-long celebration and pub-lished poetry written by twenty-first-century students—a testi-mony to Hurston’s continuing inspiration and vitality.

In subsequent chapters, we focus primarily on Their Eyes Were

Watching God, Hurston’s most widely read and taught novel, andthe recent film version of it. We also have developed strategies forteaching two of her most popular short stories and a sampling ofher anthologized nonfiction.

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“With a harp and a sword in my hands”

T h e N C T E H i g h S c h o o l L i t e r a t u r e S e r i e s

Renée H. Shea andDeborah L. Wilchek

Zora Neale Hurston in the Classroom

Zora Neale H

urston in the ClassroomSH

EA and WILCH

EK

National Council of Teachers of English1111 W. Kenyon Road

Urbana, Illinois 61801-1096800-369-6283 or 217-328-3870

www.ncte.org

ISSN 1525-5786

With the publication of her landmark novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston has become a widely taught author in English classrooms across the nation. The

authentic voices of her fi ction and nonfi ction embrace colloquial dialect and explore universal themes of relationships, self-discovery, race, and identity. In Zora Neale Hurston in the Classroom, the eleventh book in the NCTE High School Literature Series, teachers will discover new ways to share the work of this important author with students. The book offers a practical approach to Hurston using a range of student-centered activities for teaching Hurston’s nonfi ction, short stories, and the print and fi lm versions of Their Eyes Were Watching God. This volume features numerous resources and strategies for helping students engage with Hurston’s writing. Highlights include biographical information, critical analysis, teacher-tested activities, writing assignments and student models, and discussion strategies and questions. Zora Neale Hurston in the Classroom: “With a harp and a sword in my hands” is a useful resource that will enliven any literature classroom with exciting and enriching ideas and activities.

ZoraHurston_090035.indd 1ZoraHurston_090035.indd 1 12/5/2008 9:11:42 AM12/5/2008 9:11:42 AM

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Zora Neale Hurston in the Classroom